Are you preserving your child's past?

If you are a working mom like me, you might find it hard to do all the things moms want to do for their children like preserve some of their earliest toys, shoes, artwork and photographs.

My husband’s mother, who passed away in 2009, was so good at saving things for her children. It probably was because she taught elementary children locally for decades, and her specialty was reading. Thanks to her, we have my husband’s baby portrait, one of his first shoes (not sure where the other one went) and a brown stuffed animal he played with as a boy least 40 years ago. That old dog is a bit torn up these days, but his ripped yellow-ribbon collar still bears his name: Frumpy.

We also have a case of DVDs made from videos spanning decades back to the present time that includes every member of the family (even me), family friends and all of our children -- and we have a lot. Everything from holidays to performances by my nieces as children, who are now adults, are on those DVDs.

I don’t have any videos, school papers, toys or clothes from my early youth, but I do have some photos and a plate I decorated with a Christmas tree with my full name under it when I was around seven or eight. As you can see from the photo I did not become an artist. (Nor did I stay Kristin, so please don’t call me that.) I do have mementos from my teen years, including newspaper articles I wrote for my high school paper, some music scrap books and athletic ribbons and trophies.

For our son, though, I wanted more. I am not a scrap booker, and we are sporadic with our videography, so what we do to keep our son's early things is pretty simple. He has a wooden toy box that his great uncle made for him a few years ago, and we use that to store all kinds of things: his first tooth that fell out, his favorite footie pajamas from when he was two or three, his first pair of Vans (yes, my husband’s idea), a lot of artwork from his early years, and we keep adding things to the box each year.

My favorite thing in the box is audio recordings of my son talking very early and recordings of me telling him stories about our lives. Those are meant for him to hear when he gets older.

The box is locked so he can’t get into it, but he does like to look at his baby stuff from time to time so we occassionally unlock it and let him look inside. The rule is, my husband says, our son gets to take one thing out at a time to look at, but he has to put something new in at the same time.

We want the box to be an amazing travel-back-in-time experience for him some day as an adult.

For today, I think we will add Frumpy, so he can see a toy his dad played with when he was a child. How cool would that be for him as an adult?

How about you? Do you keep items and memories for your child to look at when they get older? If so, let me know how you do it. We are always looking for new ideas.